


Killing To Save Lives Is Like Screwing for Virginity

by dancinbutterfly



Category: The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apocalypse Prevented, Archetypes, Character Death, Choices, Gen, Great Old Ones, Guns, Marijuana, Misses Clause Challenge, Mysterious People In Charge of Things, Near Death Experiences, Sacrifice, Self-Sacrifice, Were-Creatures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 04:39:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1102505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is no Fool and she is no Virgin. Dana knows that doesn't mean the world has to end. Marty doesn't know how the world will go on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Killing To Save Lives Is Like Screwing for Virginity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ijemanja](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ijemanja/gifts), [raedbard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/gifts), [100indecisions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/100indecisions/gifts).



> For:  
> -ijemanja - who wanted Dana to shoot. I took this way out into left field and I hope that is okay because she is the hero of this piece but I took it another way. Thank you for the inspiration and I hope you like it despite veering off the prompt.  
> -100indecisions - who wanted them surviving, that in particular is for you.  
> -raedbard - who wanted more of the Director. You ask and you receive. I adored writing her. It's not the daily grind of her life but I hope I did her enough justice for you to enjoy.
> 
> Thanks so much to Tuesday for the fast and thorough beta job. 
> 
> WARNING: THERE IS A SPECIFIC VIOLENCE TRIGGER WARNING THAT IS HUGELY SPOILERING FOR THIS FIC. If you have any concern that a form of violence might be a trigger, click to the bottom for details however if you can read it without it effecting your personal wellness, I hope you will sight-unseen as it's heavily plot related. Just remember to take care of yourself first. 
> 
> The title paraphrases a quote by George Carlin: Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.

**~You never know what a fool you can be till life gives you the chance.~ Edith Phillpots**

The roles are the Fool and the Virgin, and Dana has said, so many times now, that she’s not a virgin. She feels like a broken record. She’s had boyfriends—a few, actually. None since she got to college, of course, but she had three serious ones before she graduated. There was also a girl the summer before she started college she, you know, did stuff with. Jules always thought she was a prude, but Dana wasn’t. She was just shy. She never made the first move, and that is a big difference.

So now she holds a gun in her hand at the end of the world, pointed at her best friend. Marty looks terrified, though she’s not sure that he’s afraid of her. The Director looks ready to strangle him with her bare hands if she could. Then there are the Lovecraft rejects underneath them to worry about. All in all, it’s funny really. It’s so fucking funny, how wrong this is in every possible way.

“The Fool has to die, right? Thats what you said?” she asks, her gun hand steady, her gaze never leaving Marty. “The Fool dies, and the Virgin suffers. That’s the deal.”

“Yes. You hold the future in your hands, Dana. Please. Please.” The Director doesn’t seem like the type of woman to beg, but she is now. Her words are still strong, yet it is a plea nonetheless. “Do the right thing.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m going to. I just—” She shakes her head. God, she’s been an idiot, blindly trusting the places and people around her without question, sure that everything would be okay if she just believed it and worked towards it. Stupid. Now she thinks she knows, but she has to check. “Marty, how many people have you slept with?”

“What?”

“How many? Kurt said Amber was your first girlfriend, and she broke up with you after a month.” She laughs. It's a brittle broken sound. “She said you smoked too much”

He makes a distressed noise. “She was _not_ my first—”

“She was. You didn’t sleep with her, did you,” Dana says, and it’s not a question, calm settling over her warm and soft like a blanket. She steps back and back and back, until her heel hits air at the edge of the dais. “My first was Kyle Mason in eighth grade. There were two other guys in high school, then Anna Meyers before we met. Like I said, I’m not a virgin.” 

She gives them a smile that actually reaches her eyes. She lifts the gun and presses the barrel to her temple. It’s warm from where she fired it at the werewolf. Dana turns her head so that she can look directly at the woman who orchestrated all of this. She doesn’t want Marty’s anguish to be the last thing she sees. 

“I’ve been told the most foolish thing a person can do is commit suicide. Let’s find out.”

Dana pulls the trigger, but doesn’t hear the explosion. 

She doesn’t feel the fall.

~*~*~

**~Celibacy is the worst form of self-abuse.~ Peter DeVries**

Marty lands on the ground with a thump, breathless and wounded, as blood fills the marking of the Fool and the Virgin. The walls vibrate, and the air cools, and he finishes in his pockets for a joint. He cannot fucking deal with this right now. He just can’t. He needs to have a smoke and calm the fuck down and figure this out. Only problem is that his hands are shaking so badly he can’t light the damn thing.

“Allow me.” Manicured hands take the lighter from him and deftly light him up. He takes the deep drag of his entire life to date and holds it so long he nearly passes out before he exhales coughing. The Director waits until his fit is under control before speaking again. “I must say, you two did subvert our gender and archetype stereotypes. I’m impressed. Getting in the way you did, the havoc you created, you’re no fool, and that little tart was apparently no virgin. I told them to do better background checks.” She sighs. “It’s so hard to find good help these days.”

Marty glares at her blood-splattered Loubitans. He hates how the drying, brownish splatters clash with the lipstick red soles and he hates them on principle because he hates _her_ and he hates _this_. “Go fuck yourself with a cactus.”

“I’ll pass that message on to our Mexico branch, as we’re a little short on cacti here.”

“Go away. Jesus, don’t you have a retirement home to burn down or orphans to eat or something?”

“Not until next quarter. Listen, Marty.” She sits down next to him and plucks the joint from his hand and takes a long, slow drag. It’s almost decadent, the way she exhales with the slow control of an experienced smoker, and he really, really hates her. So much. It burns through his veins like battery acid. “Dana is a hero. You realize that, don’t you? What she did was one of the noblest acts I’ve ever heard of in the history of mankind.”

“And you’d know.”

“Yeah, Tommy Chong, I would.”

“You’re dating yourself, lady.”

“If that’s all I’m doing, it’s a good day,” she says, looking out at the carnage in front of them. They sit in silence for a moment, before a rasp of metal on stone sends them both to the Patience Buckner seconds before she hurls herself down the stairs, armed and screeching. Marty can’t help but be a little awed at the way the Director disposes of her, a few swift blows and she’s over the edge of the dais in the pit—with Dana, he hates that the little zombie psycho is with Dana—and gone. 

For her part, the Director’s barely rumpled her suit. She dusts off bits of zombie dirt, straightens her jacket, and waves at the stairs. “Shall we?”

“Shall we what? You know that hell and its minions are unleashed up there, right?”

“Of course I know that. You unleashed them.” She brushes her hair back from her face and shakes her head. “Great plan, by the way. Well thought out.”

“Thank you.”

“That was sarcasm. Learn to recognize it if you want to stay alive. If I’m forced to explain myself to you too many times, I’ll just kill you and save myself the trouble.”

Marty huffs. His buzz is starting to kick in, so he can ignore the fact that she is probably dead serious. He giggles to himself at that. Dead serious. Yeah. He’s definitely feeling it, thank sweet merciful Christ. 

He takes another hit, then another as he follows her up the stone ziggurat like a baby duck. “That was rude and uncalled for.”

“Finish that before we get upstairs. It’s a non-smoking area.”

“A non-smoking area full of dead people? I don’t think they’ll mind.”

“Oh, they wouldn’t,” the Director agrees. “But it’s not the people you'll need to worry about. It never is.”

Marty goes still as a statute, like the back of her head is the face of Medusa, a foot frozen in the air half an inch above the next step. “Was that sarcasm?”

She doesn’t stop or look back. “No.”

“Do I want to know?”

“No.”

He puts his hand to his forehead. “Awesome. Just. That’s just awesome.”

“Come on, Virgin,” she calls. “We have a lot to do.”

“We?” Marty flounders, taking the stairs at a run to catch up to her. “What we? We? There’s no _I_ in we.”

“Yet there is both an I and a U in Survival. So glad we’re done with the spelling bee portion of this evening. It’s been magical. Now—” She stops as they reach a door that Marty knows wasn’t here when they came down earlier. It just wasn’t. This door is heavy, pale yellow wood that stands out in stark relief against the stone. It’s obvious. He would have noticed the way he notices her dig in her pockets for a keyring which has a small silver key that she uses to unlock the door. It swings inward, and light shines from within. 

It’s so bright he can barely see. He holds up a hand to shield his eyes, but that doesn’t help him figure out what’s beyond the door. 

She waves a hand in invitation. “After you.”

“Am I going to die if I go in there?” With everything that’s happened, he thinks thats a fair question.

“You got through all of this—seeing through the veils, finding your way in, destroying our base, being the first male Virgin to live through the sacrifice—yet you think I’d be so wasteful as to kill you? No, Marty, I’ve got much bigger plans for you than that.” She makes a come hither gesture with her hand before reaching out and taking his in her own. “Come along. I’m already late for my meeting.”

He's been too afraid for too long to feel a spike of terror at the unknown now. The weed is helping with that, as well. That must be why he goes so easily when she pulls him into the strange glowing space on the other side of the door. 

Marty is blinded by the light and feels nothing until wind hits his face. It howls so loudly he doesn’t hear the door slam shut behind them. By the time his eyes adjust, Marty is already too far away to feel the stone altar room tremble as it caves in on itself to the sound of deep, rumbling laughter.

 

(end)

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning: Dana commits suicide by shooting herself in the temple with the gun.


End file.
